


The Better Nights Option

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Post-Continuum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes when he wakes up in the morning, he forgets he’s lost a leg. Then he realizes the truth. A fraction of a second later, realizes he’s lost Jack, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better Nights Option

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to the jackdanielpromptfic comm at Dreamwidth.

Sometimes when he wakes up in the morning, he forgets he’s lost a leg. Then he realizes the truth. A fraction of a second later, realizes he’s lost Jack, too. He’s never sure which hurts the most. Both aches are physical as well as psychological.

Both hurt like fuck.

Daniel used to like waking up, back then, in what he now refers to as his “real life” (nothing about this existence is real to him).  When he could reach out and touch the long, smooth line of Jack’s back and feel the living warmth of him. When Jack would turn, blink against the light and pull him in for a hi-you’re-too-far-away-over-there morning breath kiss.

He’s too far way now all right. He’s Daniel Jackson, persona non grata. Minus one leg, one team, one life and any meaningful reason to go on.

The New York apartment the powers that be allocated him is comfortable but it’s not home. He could have bought an aquarium but he hasn’t, and he could have lined the shelves with books but he hasn’t done that either, because somewhere deep inside, he believes this is not forever.

He will get home.

He will get back to Jack.

A hundred times or more he’s held his cellphone in his shaking hand and been seconds away from calling Sam. He has the conversation well rehearsed. He’s practiced it often enough on the many nights when sleep won’t come. On his better nights, he’s persuasive enough that Sam agrees to call Mitchell and they arrange a clandestine against-their-agreement meeting and she promises to hatch a plan that will get them home. On his worst nights, Sam is distant and upset and although they talk of home, there is an unspoken realization that they will never see it again.

Daniel likes the better nights option best, and sometimes it’s almost enough to keep him going. Because he doesn’t want to make the best of things. He doesn’t want to learn to live like this. He’s angry and bitter and lonely and doesn’t really care any more that he feels that way.

In his darkest moments, and there are many, he wonders what happened to the wide-eyed idealist who stood in the rain outside an empty lecture hall with a suitcase and a head full of dreams. He crossed the universe, saw a million wonders and fell in love, that’s what happened. He fell for a sensual, brilliant woman, and then he lost her and a part of himself into the bargain. And then he fell in love with the closest thing he had to a best friend. A man who made to love to him as strongly and beautifully as he argued with him. Their days were filled with duty and routine; their nights with passion and fire and a brutal, necessary honesty.

Jack.

 _Oh god, Jack ..._

Daniel wants desperately to laugh again. He doesn’t laugh now. Jack used to make him laugh, and not always intentionally. Those were the best times, when Jack’s “what the fuck are you laughing at?” face would relax and his eyes would crinkle at the corners and shine with love and fun. And, oh _god,_ he wants to hear Jack’s voice again. It holds an endless fascination for him, the way it can go from harsh and fierce in the field (or lately in the more dangerous battlefield that is the Pentagon) to heart-stoppingly soft but fierce in a whole different way when he whispers of his love and need.

Daniel’s lost track of how long he's been trapped here, but he knows it’s a Tuesday today, which doesn’t matter all that much because one day is very like another. It’s late evening on what has been a surprisingly warm and sunny spring day. He’s sitting on his bed, rubbing absently at what’s left of his left leg.

However long he's been here, it's too long.

He pulls himself up and reaches for the cellphone on his bedside table. His finger hovers over the button that will connect him to Sam.

He takes a deep breath.

Tonight feels like a better night.


End file.
